Quote: "1. Take a loan for 100bn from the World Bank.
2. Build 4 runways and infrastructure at Upper Heyford.
3. Run HS2 through it.
Bingo, 25 mins to either central London or Birmingham and the M40 nearby."
This is "Silverstrata's folly" all over again, albeit in a better location, but it's still too far out. It's even further than "London Oxford" for Pete's sake!
Doubt if the world bank would get involved, is it in their remit?
Who takes out the loan? For the private sector it's not a good business proposition, for the banks, it's a bad loan, for the government to be involved is a criminal waste of public money.
Quote: "What to do with Heathrow is the difficult bit."
Exactly, that is the point!
Quote: "Paris technically has three airports - BVA might be a field in the middle of nowhere but it is still classed as a PAR area airport."
BVA (or perhaps "Paris-North" in FR-speak) is about 50 mi. north of the city, so the equivelant of CBG, OXF or LYX? Not sure it's an example we should be following for London!
Quote:
"So, just as an example, there is only one hub airport in Moscow?"
Quote: "Aeroflot at SVO, yes."
Not so, Moscow has a dual hub system similar to New York. SU hubs at SVO, as mentioned above, and S7 and UN at DME.
Like EWR and JFK in New York, these Moscow hub airports have a very large domestic network to back them up and provide the required connectivity. That is why the dual hub concept works in these cities and why it did not work in London before (under the disasterous "second force" policy), and will not in future.
Last edited by Fairdealfrank; 7th Jun 2012 at 17:15.